


Happy Wednesday

by darkmus



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Presents, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2012-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-30 03:37:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkmus/pseuds/darkmus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joey's birthday was on an average January day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Wednesday

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday, Joey!  
> January 25, 2012
> 
> My 80th Yu-Gi-Oh fic!

As far as birthdays go, this year wasn't turning out to be all that special or that great. For one thing, Wednesdays really aren't that exciting to begin with. They're boring. Wednesday is the middle of the week; in a word: average. And, being an average day, Joey still had to go to work.

It probably wasn't going to be a crappy day, but Joey hazarded a guess that it wouldn't take too much to head down that path.

Case in point, when Joey woke up this morning he was groggy as hell. As he wavered out of bed, he had the inkling feeling that he might be coming down with something. The recent cold snap must have shocked his system and there was also some sort of illness making its way around his germ ridden office. It had already claimed several victims, including Tristan. 

It was an unfortunate turn of events, but mostly because Tristan was one of the main members on his team for an important project. With Tristan's absence, everyone else had to take on even more work. To make matters worse, said project was due this upcoming Monday, so it was not as if Joey could take a break. In fact, it was looking as though he would have to come in on his scheduled Friday off to work on it as well. The wall of things that needed to be done was daunting.

The one good thing this morning, however, was that when he opened up his phone, he saw that his inbox was happily punctuated with birthday messages.

It was particularly nice to see his sister's email, timestamped at 12:01 AM:

_Hi, Joey!  
Happy Birthday!!! :)  
I wish I wasn't so busy and could fly there to celebrate with you... but I hope it turns out great!  
I can't wait to see you and Mom during Spring Break. I'll talk to you later!  
Love,  
Serenity_

Seeing the message made him smile and he imagined what it must have looked like to see his sister poised in front of the computer, waiting until 9 PM to send the email the exact moment midnight hit Domino City.

However, he thought with a grimace, she could have done well to not mention their mother. Joey knew that at some point today, she would, yet again, remind him that he was getting older and then harass him about settling down and making her some grandchildren.

Though seeing that he was not seeing anyone, his mother had yet to connect the dots that this would not happen any time soon. Besides, there were other factors that hindered that sought-after fantasy that he was not inclined to bring up with her until absolutely necessary.

It had been nice to reconnect with her since his father passed away, but not _that_ nice.

Wading though his emails, he saw that he got a quick note from Yuugi and Téa, who were vacationing in Europe:

_Happy Birthday, Joey! See you soon! - Y &T_

And one from the invalid, Tristan:

_hppy bd bro_

Other than that, his inbox was unfortunately cluttered with memos from work regarding so-and-so portion of the project's paper being incorrect, missing figures, and other issues that would make today a particularly busy one.

After getting out of the door, he saw that his car had a light layer of frost covering it. Nothing a few scrapes and running the car heater on high couldn't fix, but annoying all the same.

As he cleaned the frost off of his car, he realized that in a tiny space in his heart he had been hoping for some sort of note from Kaiba. The rational part of his brain knew that sort of hope was a long shot.

Did Kaiba even know when his birthday was? He surely must have discovered it, Joey thought, somewhere in between creating that obsessive-compulsive database of duelists and from knowing him for so long. Then again, the other man had never once showed the fact that he knew. In all the years they'd known each other, Kaiba had never really wished him a happy birthday. 

There probably wasn't a trace of a message from Kaiba, because well... Kaiba was Kaiba. Even if this odd-year birthday was of note, it wasn't as if the unavailable CEO would be any less unavailable to wish him a happy birthday.

But then again, it wasn't that hard to send a quick note with those two words.

But then _again_ , Kaiba's social skills were sometimes ass-backward.

Joey shook his head and threw the ice scraper into the back seat of his car and set off for work. He was thinking about this too much.

They were "friends", sure, but as and much as Joey wanted more, they weren't _that_ friendly. To tell the truth, he wasn't about to make his life more complicated than it already was.

Though, there was something about Kaiba's unwitting omission of birthday wishes that really made it seem like the entire world didn't care it was his birthday and Joey rolled his eyes at the thought. Kaiba would've loved to hear that. 

While he drove to the office, it seemed as though twice as many cars than usual were honking at each other. Thankfully, none of them were honking at him. Also luckily, he was able to hit all the green lights and the minutes lost from defrosting his car were countered away.

The first thing he did when he got to work was to get an update from his team on their progress. There wasn't much.

He spent the morning running to different coworkers, pressing them for their past-due sections and then dove into the task of finishing up the write-up analysis

All throughout the day, when he took a small mental break, he fluctuated between thinking he was being overly dramatic of the lack of birthday wishes and thinking that he shouldn't be putting that much emphasis on the day anyway.

Just as in his inbox where his birthday messages were smothered by non-birthday related emails, his nearly neurotic thoughts smothered the fact that he had received three very nice notes from the people he cared about most. 

The absence of birthday wishes was most likely due to ignorance and harried staff and, to just about everyone else, it was a perfectly average January day.

He ended up working through lunch.

By 2 PM, Joey's back was starting to ache from being hunched over his keyboard and his eyes were strained from the bright screen.

Oh, the joys of getting older.

It was about this time too, that the tickle at the back of his throat was making itself known again. When he closed his eyes to rest them, Joey felt his head throbbing. And when it opened them again, his brain was more than a bit hazy. His concentration was rapidly deteriorating.

Definitely sick, Joey concluded.

He decided to skip out for a few minutes to visit the nearby convenience store for some cold medicine. As he made his way outside, he almost ran into someone but swerved away at the last moment. Thankfully the convenience store was about a block away from his office.

The wobbled in and found his panacea and headed to the long check-out line.

He tried to concentrate on staying upright as he trudged forward.

Suddenly there was a small murmur in the line behind him. He turned and he saw something strange.

There was Kaiba, a few people behind him, with a small pack of mints in tow. Apparently even anal retentive CEOs got bad breath too.

It was strange because he could've sworn that Kaiba Corp was a good 30 minutes from here... He blinked to clear his head but the explanation did not come to him.

Finally, Joey reached the front of the line. He deposited the cold medicine, some vitamin C drops, and a box of tissues on the counter. The bored girl behind the register rung up the items.

"$20.12..."

Joey nodded absently and reached into his pocket for his wallet.

It wasn't there.

"Where--?"

He rifled though his jacket as she looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"I swear I have it--"

Suddenly, a large man behind Joey jabbed him hard in the shoulder.

"You don't have your money?" he spat, hand clenching his candy bars in annoyance. "If you don't have any money get out of line! Some of us are in a hurry!"

Joey swung around and growled, "Hey, buddy. Just keep your pants on!"

"Buddy? BUDDY? I ain't your buddy--!"

"Excuse me," a calm, silky voice said behind him.

Joey swung around again to see Kaiba standing right next to him, so that he separated the two fighting men. Kaiba's shoulders grazed his and Joey felt his face get hot. Well, hotter anyway. He blinked, confused.

Kaiba lay down his mints on the counter and pulled out a 20 and a 5 dollar bill.

Through his hazy mind, Joey realized what was going on.

"Kaiba..." he said, exasperated. "You don't need to do that. I can just come back."

Kaiba glared at him and handed the money to the clerk. Then, he paused for a moment.

"Wait." He grabbed a bow from a nearby pile of clearance Christmas decorations. "This too." 

The clerk rang up the two additional items, put the money in the register and handed Kaiba his change.

"Thank you. Have a nice day," she said without any hint of actually meaning it.

Kaiba grabbed the bag and Joey's arm and went out the door.

The change of temperature from the inside of the store and the outside cold was a shock and chilled Joey to the bone.

"Kaiba," Joey growled. He wrenched his arm from the other's strong grip to button up his coat. He sighed and blinked hard, trying to clear his mind. The chilly winter air helped somewhat.

"Thanks..."

Kaiba pocketed his mints and pulled out the medicine and the bow.

Joey looked at him curiously until Kaiba removed the sticky backing of the bow and stuck it on the medicine box.

Joey laughed and, for the first time since reading his birthday emails, it wasn't looking so bad. He could handle the next few work-filled hours.

Kaiba smirked and handed him the box and the bag.

"Happy birthday," he said before turning and walking away.

Joey smiled and made his way back to the office.

Maybe Wednesdays weren't so boring after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel, [Happy Monday](http://archiveofourown.org/works/335194).


End file.
